Fellow Diana Richmond publishes her first novel: Some Other Time

Posted on Wednesday, 13 January 2010

A must-read: you won't be able to put it down:

Bill Evans' gentle ballad reminds Greta and Sunday of all they shared and all they couldn't share when they first met in 1964 and fell in love. Sunday Morgan was the first Negro in Greta's otherwise white high school in Milwaukee. Both serious students from troubled families, they had everything in common but their color. Everything fell apart when Sunday returned from Mississippi after Freedom Summer.

Thirty-two years later, Sunday and Greta meet again after a life-threatening incident forces Sunday to confront the meaning of courage. At fifty, Sunday is a distinguished professor of African American history in California. Long married and the father of three children, he finds his marriage threatened by his compulsive philandering. Greta, a psychotherapist and single mother of a teen-aged son, has never formed a lasting connection with a man.

Their second meeting marks the time in each of their lives that they begin to live their lives forward, rather than remain haunted by past fears.

What they are saying

5.0 out of 5 stars: Remarkable Debut Novel

In her debut novel, Richmond explores the brief intimacies that leave an indelible mark on us. She develops the story's two main characters from birth to middle age with great skill and care. Mid-way through the book, we find ourselves so attached to these characters, that we - like the characters themselves- become unable to discern whether their defining choices are motivated by their frailties or strengths.

Richmond's exquisite sense of detail easily draws the reader into the story. From the morning sounds of a Milwaukee Catholic orphanage to the intensity of the south side of Chicago on the evening of Dr. King's assassination - Richmond's descriptions bring a compelling richness to the story.

5.0 out of 5 stars: Nuanced look at a relationship that fractures due to race

Some Other Time is a brilliant first novel. I read it in one long weekend, wanting to know the outcome. It does not have the clich￩d romance ending you might expect. The book is subtle and nuanced, the characters true to their era and geography, and the relationships evolve in a rich pattern.

Gretchen and Sunday are children when they meet, become best friends, and fall in love. They are soul mates, and seem destined to break the barriers that seem almost insurmountable in the Midwest of the mid-1960s. Yet something goes wrong, and they separate for years.

What went wrong and what happens when they finally meet again? Well worth the read to find out.